Despite cutting a swathe through teams in Australia (and the Windies, who barely count), these Aussie bowlers are yet to live up to their reputations overseas. The ones who have actually played overseas, that is. Johnson, crap in England. Hazlewood never played in England. Starc, has he ever played in England? Cummins, the one Test wonder. Lippy the Lyon, seemingly always about to take a bag, but never really able to collar a batting line-up. We need The Rock, Rhyno.

Starc played county cricket for Yorkshire for a season and did extremely well. He played meh for a test or two in the 2013 Ashes over in England. Hopefully, he's improved his red ball cricket. He does love bowling at the tail so that's helpful.

I was genuinely impressed with our bowling in the Caribbean lately. Bear in mind that we were bowling against the same side that England did only a few weeks earlier, and had much more success. There shouldn't be any reason to assume that we'll do badly with the ball in this series.

PS- I don't think we'll miss Spearmint at all. He looked a bowler on borrowed time against India, and even were he fit for this series, hadn't had much cricket lately anyway. I'm not even sure they would have picked him.

Yes, Rhyno was short of a gallop and probably would have struggled to make a big impact in this series, but I meant we would miss his ability to steady the attack by bowling tight and pinching wickets. Who's going to stead an attack now? Hazlewood, I hope will keep it tight.

And when will Haddin learn not to dive over catches? This will probably be his last series, so it will be a little late for him to correct his footwork and lateral movement AFTER HIS LAST BLOODY TEST!!!!!

With the Poms taking the juice out of all the pitches we will have to take our chances to retain the Ashes. Wwe can't afford to allow Pommy batsmen off the hook. There's a good chance Haddin has dropped the Ashes.

Saw most of the last session in the end, before the feed gave up the ghost with about 5 overs to go. Hope this isn't the pattern for the summer.

Funny day. We didn't bowl particularly well, but still managed seven wickets. We're probably the happier of the two sides - the scoreboard says honours even, but England will be thinking that they should be miles in front and that it's an opportunity wasted. Everyone looked pretty toothless with the ball at times, Johnson in particular, but he didn't really bowl that badly. You can see why they do it, but I hate the way that boards prepare slow pitches to nullify our quicks. If we get them for less than 400 it'll be job done given the conditions, although we'll be hoping for somewhere closer to 350. Any more than 400 and it's advantage England, although to be fair, any more than 400 in the first dig is usually advantage anyone.

Carrot, I gave up on my dodgy stream mid way through the session after lunch. Kept buffering and I'd just about had enough of the Aussie bowling efforts so couldn't be bothered trying again. They were all so inconsistent. I thought Starc was the worst for all he's got three wickets. Johnson at least was troubling Ballance.

Starc's stock ball appears to be a full inswinger to the right-hander. Unplayable when it's moving around, rubbish when it's not. He bowled loads of them at Stokes (when they were outswingers because he's a leftie) before he finally got him.

I'm consoling myself in the fact that even though it's as bad I've seen us bowl in a long time, we're still well in the game. On the other side of that coin is the worry that if we bowl like that again against a batting line-up that goes that deep, we can't possibly hope to get away with it. The English are probably having exactly the same conversation with themselves mind you, you can't give away soft dismissals the way they did against a bowling attack like ours and expect to win series.

So we need to determine the vernacular Bad Mitch1 = Johnson. Bad Mitcvh 2 Starc. Both turned up today. At tea we were staring down 3/350, so a good fightback. Haddin could be dropped by the 3rd test if he doesnt improve. Tho their keeper is also ordinary, and our catching is superior in general. we should still get a lead, so the draw once more is a likelihood

Didn't watch a ball of day 1. Croq reminds us that this is pretty much what happened on day 1 of the last Ashes test in Cardiff in 2009, and the Bhaggies went on to spank 6/674 with tons to Katich, Punter, North and Klutzy. So I guess Wood will be the new Monty.

Pretty good bookends to the day by Oz; too bad about Klutzy and Root in the middle. Any chance of Nevill getting a run and being the sole Vic in the team? He had some good form with the bat in the warm up games.

The most horrible aspect to the opening day, besides the Blues doing what we all expected but not *that* badly, was finding out that the Ashes are on GEM only. I pay for Fox but GEM is only on the HD package ffs.

Btw, it was -3 on the Federal Highway yesterday and still the fire danger was "low to moderate". They must have some highly flammable frosts down there. Or it's just another sign of the times: A meaningless metric motivated more by a mania for mindless statements rather than anything ostensibly useful as a guide. Much like "these Ozzies never drop 'em".

If you all get sick of wrasslin' with your televisions and cricket, check out Glitch on ABC iView. It was on tonight at 8.30. Goes very nicely. Presuming you feel like watching a tweak on zombie shows.

We can't give them too much shit about the Ashes being Australia vs. The rest if the World anymore as their yarpy contingent has finally buggered off.
Also didn't we fast track some bloke from pakistan(?)s visa just so he'd be eligible to play cricket for us? I last heard something about it twelve months ago or so, but I don't watch or listen to the news so am blissfully ignorant of current happenings around the place.

England are about as English as I think we've seen them in awhile. Stokes was born in NZ and Ballance is/was Zimbabwean, but that's it. Where a player is born is really beside the point, mind you - my beef with the some of the players of a few years ago was that various of them were actually pretty well-established first-class players in other countries before they played for England and therefore not really products of the English game. You couldn't say that about any of these guys - Ballance is the closest to it, I think he played under-17s and maybe under 19s for Zimbabwe, but he was already in England by then and made it very clear that that's where he saw his future. A lot of their coaching staff are international, but in terms of onfield players I can't see any reason to resent England on the "International XI" stakes at the moment.

Is Flasheart 1 Clarke? If so I agree - he doesn't look that fit. I doubt he'll last the year.

The way the games progressing - i.e. at 4 and over - I think we might get closer to their total than you'd think. If Lyon gets even 20-odd the complexion could change completely. England will get a pretty decent lead whatever happens, but it won't be easy for them to take another ten wickets on this deck, particularly with rain around on Sunday.

I've moved to WA so viewing times are 6pm-1:30am, which is quite respectable. Not sure I could stay up till 3:30am if I was still in the eastern states.

The deck was pretty good and the Poms bowling was nothing special. Rogers got to 95 and just went to water and got out to a shit shot, you could see it coming a mile away too - he looked like he'd just gone in to bat once into the nervous nineties.

Smith took on Ali a few times and looked pretty comfortable doing it, Ali set him a trap that blind freddy could have seen, Smith took him on and fell for it.

Clarke, as above.

Voges apparently decided the tempo needed increasing with six overs to go and slapped one to cover instead of doing the intelligent thing and putting up the shutters for the night.

According to Google, there's a 70% chance of showers in Cardiff on Sunday, starting at 10am and decreasing during the day. It'd be freakin' hilarious if they had us on the rack and weather came to our rescue. We'd rather have played well here and be in with a chance of winning ourselves, but can you imagine the frustration if we were in another situation like 2009. I'd much rather hand that frustration over to England, thanks very much.

It's always pretty hollow feeling to be bailed out of anything, mind you. Sometimes I'd rather lose honourably. We have said "B-b-b-b-but the weather in Cardiff!!!!" every time anyone brings up the 2009 Ashes, we can only expect the same if it happens in reverse. Someone could go on to win the series convincingly from here, of course - in which case it won't make any difference.

That wasn't quite as disastrous a day as it could have been. We stuck to our task, and didn't let the boundaries get to us too much. There was certainly enough there to show that there's a lot of life in this series from our perspective with the ball even if we lose here. 411 is a lot of runs and a big ask, but on this deck and in the middle of a bit of a Golden Age of attacking cricket anything is possible. The worry will be if we lose badly, but if we give the chase a bit of a shake and still lose it will set the series up nicely. If Haddin comes in any more than 100 runs away from the target, we're toast, mind you.

Tomorrow should be a good day, though - I think the English did us all a favour by getting bowled out, I can't imagine that Cook would have declared anytime soon if he had the choice.

It's not possible Carrot. Not by the Aussies. When do they chase successfully? It would be one of the best chases in history and we've only five batsmen.

Well, five if you count Warner who has been on what appears to be a very successful self-mind-fvck programme with all his recent nonsense about not wanting to be an enforcer and changing his attitude. It's bad when eejits start to try and think, it's hurts their brain and everything else goes to shit till they stop.

We're playing nice-ish. There were a few funny moments yesterday with some gamesmanship from Lyon and Warner to Stokes. Stokes has this weird habit of dragging his bat around the crease in a semi-circle at the end of every over before he does some gardening - some sort of superstition. Lyon and Warner noticed, and as soon as the last ball was bowled in an over would make a point of running to the popping crease and standing there in Stokes' way having a chat or doing up their shoelaces. It's obviously a pretty important part of Stokes' routine because he stood there waiting every time! Quite funny.

Respect to Warner for gutsing through the tough start and not chucking it away, that's what I want to see more of this series, batsmen putting a price on their wicket and grinding out a Steve Waugh-esque ton.

A pity he had to get out in Clarke time but it's a start, more of that please!

A wicket right on the stroke of lunch. Good, good. We can't have a situation where I actually believe that we can knock these off - belief is a horrible, horrible thing in these situations, it always leads to disappointment.

My bold prediction: we'll be 7/300 or so at stumps, with everyone looking skyward tomorrow. The first session will be washed out, and we'll be on and off the field in the second. England will win by 50-odd, which will really whet appetites for the rest of the series.

Well, it was 3/100 instead of 3/30, but the result is the same. Three wickets is just too many to lose at this stage. Cue plucky partnerships that flirt with giving us hope, with us always being two wickets behind the game at all times.

..... Or a wholesale collapse and lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. It might actually do us a favour, we'd have to drop Watson and/or Haddin then.

They say that Moeen Ali has a pretty cover drive for a number 8, but it can't be any better than Johnson's. I'm sure Johnson could have become a very good specialist batsman had he been injured in his teens or something, à la Michael Bevan.

Johnson makes a speciality of embarrassing our own batsmen from time to time.

Watson averages 26 at 6 which is what Johnson has averaged for the past 2 years. So why is Watson picked I hear you ask? NFI is the answer.

How shit are our batsmen when having to bat for time or pride or whatever? I mean really, HOW SHIT ARE THEY?

I agree about Warner getting out just before lunch that was a very big letdown but made all the rest of the bloody shower just that easier to take as I knew for sure once Warner got out, that we wouldn't make end of play.

I'm feeling terribly sweary, it's always like that when the Ashes are on in England.

Let's hope Watson's played his last Test, at least for this series anyway. The thinking behind picking him ahead of Marsh was that his economy with the ball gave him the edge, but given that he only bowled 13 overs in the match and didn't score many runs, that can't honestly be a factor anymore. Marsh has scored bucketloads of runs lately, and frankly we need runs more than we need change options with the ball. 13 wicketless overs is nothing in the scheme of an entire Test match, and I'm sure Marsh can give us that anyway.

I'd really like them to make the tough decision and drop Haddin as well. He kept badly, let through byes and didn't score any runs - you could also argue that he might have lost us the match when it came to the Root drop. I can't see them doing it, though - they'll probably give him at least one more Test. WIth a first-class average of 44 and having made runs already on the tour, you could make an argument for Nevill playing as a specialist batsman. With the gloves, he would allow us to have genuine batsmen down to seven though, and we would have a real middle-order again. If we're insisting on having an attacking all-rounder at 6 then we have to have a keeper who can actually bat. The way things have gone lately, if Smith doesn't score a ton a game like he has, we're really vulnerable, and we can't honestly hope to win a 5 Test series on the back of one relatively inexperienced but talented player.

Depends if Starc bowls. If he's out, they may not change anything apart from the enforced change. I just can't bring myself to believe that Watson is gone. There have been so many false dawns with that fraudster.